I wouldn't exactly say that standardized tests are the only way to judge, as GWB asked, "Is our children learning?" It would of course be possible to talk to a

I wouldn't exactly say that standardized tests are the only way to judge, as GWB asked, "Is our children learning?" It would of course be possible to talk to a child and figure out if, for instance, they were illiterate. I agree that a standard test across schools would be a useful way to standardize or normalize the educational results of all the children. I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze. One other thing I'll mention is that it was SOP in our middle school to just answer randomly because there was no recourse to the individual student for low scores, and as soon as we were done with the test, we were released outside. This may have been addressed procedurally in the MCAS because I think I actually took a slightly older precursor which may have been called the MSAT. I think you can imagine how useful a test is if there's not any incentive to pass it. It might be possible that the reason the scores are dropping is because more and more children are realizing there is no reason (local to them) to score well on the test.